The "Thief of Hearts", Steven Bauer, may even steal yours!
Steven Bauer's role in Thief of Hearts,
as a cultivated burglar with a romantic turn of mind, is a decided change
of pace from the part he played in his first movie, Scarface, in which
he was the easygoing sidekick of Al Pacino's murderous Cuban gangster.
Many moviegoers may think they're discovering a most appealing new actor
in the rangy brown-eyed, brown-haired six-footer. But Steve still
gets fan mail for the role of a Cuban-American teenager - he played
eight years back in a sitcom called Que Pasa, U.S.A.? When he
was twenty, Steve appeared in eighteen episodes of the series, which featured
an emigre family in Miami trying to bridge the culture gap between
Cuban "old country" attitudes and those of their new homeland.
The series still turns up around the country in occasional PBS reruns.
Born twenty-eight years ago in Cuba,
Steve arrived in Miami at the age of three, along with his father,
a commercial-airline pilot, mother and younger brother. His parents
promptly sat him in front of a TV set to watch movies and learn English.
He remembers that he felt like an outsider. "I wouldn't talk,"
he recalls. "I didn't want to speak Spanish; I wanted to speak
the same language I heard everyone around me use - but first, I had to
learn!"
He grew up with a love for movies but
with no notion of becoming an actor. Then, when he finished high
school, a summer spent traveling abroad with other students shook him
up. "Spain, Italy, France, England, Germany - they opened my eyes
to different ways," he says. "There was so much potential to life;
I decided that when I came back, I had to do something out of the ordinary!"
After having enrolled at a community
college in Miami, he happened to audition for a play - and that was
it. Once he set foot on-stage, he says, he felt fulfilled:
"Everybody's got to have something they do well to make being alive mean
something apart from simply earning money. Acting was that for me."
He soon transferred to the University of Miami, where he landed roles in
such plays as Of Mice and Men. He was cast in musicals, too: he
had a good voice and knew music - his maternal grandfather had been a
concert violinist and Steve had studied the instrument for three years
before learning trumpet for his high school band.
Steve had played football in high school,
but he found acting much more satisfying. "In sports, I had the
skill," he remarks, "but not the fervor or the competitive drive.
I was congenial in high school, had friends, but I was mostly an observer
- introverted. When I began acting, I gained confidence."
That confidence came in handy when
one of his teachers recommended him for a role in the Miami-produced
Que Pasa, U.S.A.? Suddenly, he was a professional - actually paid
to act! In those days, Steve was called Rocky Echevarria - his
paternal grandfather, a sports fan, nicknamed his husky grandson after
Rocky Marciano, once the undefeated heavyweight champion of the world,
while Echevarria was his father's name. Que Pasa?, a charming show,
proved a great success. "I couldn't walk down the street in Miami
or go to a restaurant with my parents without being mobbed," he recalls.
"I was asked for autographs, pictures. It was crazy. I was
popular. Too popular," he adds thoughtfully. "Those were the
years when the emphasis for a young person should be on developing, not
just having fun."
Spotted by Hollywood TV executives
who saw the show, he was flown to Los Angeles for a screen test.
He went for a part he didn't get - but he stayed on anyway, though he
needed only a few more credits to graduate from college. "One of
my teachers, an actor, let me stay in an apartment he maintained in Beverly
Hills," he says. "Within two weeks, I had my first part, as a guest
star on The Rockford Files, and I was getting my first overall view
of the business, with all its complexity - learning about agents and
casting people, producers and directors, star gigs, and all that.
I was very naive."
By then, he was calling himself Bauer,
his mother's maiden name. "My nickname, Rocky, gave the impression
of me being a not-very-serious guy, "Steve says wryly, "and Echevarria,
besides being long and hard to pronounce, typed me as Latin, not matter
what I looked like. By changing my name, I shifted the focus of
attention. At least I was able to show my talent without being
labeled."
Working regularly, he ran into a problem
he never anticipated. "I wasn't getting interviews for film roles,"
he says. "People in TV become stars at a very young age, but they
don't become movie stars. They remain in television, which can
be stagnating. It's an everyday work process with little or no depth
to most of it. In a way, TV was a trap." But there were rewards.
Like Melanie Griffith. "We met while doing a 'Movie of the Week',
She's in the Army Now, and fell in love almost immediately." Married
a couple of years ago, they now live in West Hollywood. Melanie's
new movie is Body Double, a suspense mystery.
At one point, to shake loose from his
"image" as a TV actor, he and Melanie spent a year in New York taking
acting lessons and working in plays. (He's currently in a hit off-Broadway
drama, Balm in Gilead.) But ironically, when his big break came,
it was to play a Cuban-born hood. "Scarface was really the beginning
of my career," he says. "The giant step! Five months of working
with Al Pacino! I was able to really contribute to the movie
- I knew the Cuban culture, the customs, the humor, the body language."
"I feel fortunate about my background,"
he goes on. "It's given me a balance that allows me to be easygoing
and relatively stable while also learning about the real, competitive
world. I come from a home where there wasn't any pressure to make
a buck. Even though we didn't live well, the Latin attitude is
family first, then go out and do whatever you can to scramble for a living.
In this country, sometimes as soon as you can talk and walk, they're
grooming you to make it. I can always change my life, make what
I want of what's to come."
His face earnest, he says, "Once, of
course, I wanted blue eyes because all the WASP's [White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants] had blue eyes. But I'm happy with my own now."
